Americans have been giving each other what-for since the beginning. After some fits and starts, a dash of Manifest Destiny here and there and some border clashes with unruly people of French descent and Spanish/Native ancestry, we mostly got on with the process of being annoyed with each other and banding together for a war on foreign soil now and then. Yeah, there was that conflict that inspired Across Five Aprils and now and then we shoot our presidents. But Europe's got a different issue.

After spending centuries upon centuries killing each other, the Europeans decided to band together and be far more civilized than their uncouth progeny across the pond. And became saddled with many of the problems America has been dealing with with better humor for the last 40 years or so. The Germans are deathly afraid of Nazis and Turks. The French outwardly loathe the North Africans. Even the genial Dutch have issues with Arabs, and the Dubliners are wondering where the hell all these fookin' Poles came from. But possibly no nation in Europe is quite so xenophobic as the Brits. They conquered the world and the world came back to conquer them. And they don't like it one bit.

They flirted with appeasement, and there was a prominent Nazi-sympathzing fascist movement in England until Hitler sent over the Ju-88s and Bf109s. So it makes sense then, that Clarkson would maintain an affinity for BMW, and beyond that, the Continent's own Camaro SS, the M6 cabrio. Rationally, the 6 sucks. It is not affordable. It is not tossable. It is not attractive. It really just isn't that good. It is not as rad as the E39, from which it should have learned some tricks, nor as imposing or cool as its 6-series forebears. We've not had a chance to experience the M version, but Clarkson claims a liberal application of horsepower and the open-air experience make him want to mate with the car. We're just not convinced it's worth the money. And we're not driving any M6 press cars in the UK until BMW provides us with proof they've all been slathered in Purell. – Davey G. Johnson